There was a time when the Hellenes imagined that our city had been ruined by the
war, but they came to consider it even greater than it really is, because of the
splendid show I made as its representative at the Olympic games, when I entered
seven chariots for the chariot race (more than any private individual has entered
before) and took the first, second, and fourth places, and saw that everything else
was arranged in a style worthy of my victory. It is customary for such things to bring
honour, and the fact that they are done at all must also give an impression of power.
(Thucydides, 6, 16)The gymnasium
An important institution in Greek life for male citizens was the gymnasium to which
young boys must have been called to practice from an early age. The word is derived
from the Greek word gymnosmeaning ‘naked’, implying that naked exercise was
customary. Early on, the gymnasium was probably an open area with rudimentary
facilities for changing but in later times came the development of adjacent buildings
in which teaching took place. This has given rise to the use of the word in European
countries to describe institutions of further and higher education. The Academy and
the Lyceum, forever associated with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, were in the
first place gymnasia adjacent to which the philosophers had established their schools.
In Athens, physical gymnastic training was the third branch of the integrated
pattern of education described by Protagoras talking about the practice of good
parents who want the best for their children.
Later on when they send the children to school, their instructions to the masters
lay much more emphasis on good behaviour than on letters or music. The teachers
take good care of this, and when the boys have learned their letters and are ready
to understand the written word as formerly the spoken, they set the works of good
poets before them on their desks to read and make them learn them by heart,
poems containing much admonition and many stories, eulogies, and panegyrics
of the good men of old, so that the child may be inspired to imitate them and long
to be like them.
The music masters by analogous methods instil self-control and deter the young
from evil-doing. And when they have learned to play the lyre, they teach them
works of good poets of another sort, namely the lyrical, which they accompany on
the lyre, familiarising the minds of the children with the rhythms and melodies. By
this means they become more civilised, more balanced and better adjusted in
themselves and so more capable in whatever they say or do, for rhythm and
harmonious adjustment are essential to the whole of human life.RELIGION AND SOCIAL LIFE 115